


Invisible Lines We Made Up (and we crossed over)

by Nina36



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Angst, F/M, Fluff, I will die and be reincarnated with this ship, MSR, My OTP, canon of the show? who cares...Chris Carter surely does not
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-05
Updated: 2018-09-05
Packaged: 2019-07-07 09:05:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,251
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15905172
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nina36/pseuds/Nina36
Summary: It took them 25 years, hundreds, if not thousands of stolen kisses of dancing around invisible lines, of too brief happiness, of darkness and light and blood.But they were there.Together.





	Invisible Lines We Made Up (and we crossed over)

**Author's Note:**

> Here's the thing - from 1994 to 2000 I breathed The X-Files. I had written a million of fan-fictions about them which, thankfully, have disappeared (also, I wrote using another alias at the time), I am in the middle of two wips - one for Sherlock and one for the Avengers, and all of sudden I had this thing in my mind and I couldn't do anything else.   
> I haven't written Scully for a very long time, so forgive me if I'm a bit rusty - also, English is not my language so I apologise for any grammar mistake or weird sintaxis.   
> There might be a Mulder's companion piece to this. Enjoy!!

Contrary to popular belief in the Bureau, Mulder and her hadn’t been lovers since the beginning of their partnership. When she used to have a social life and friends within the Bureau – back in the early days in the basement, she was made aware of what the rumours mill about them was.

She had given them what Mulder would later call “the eyebrow of doom” and hadn’t even dignified people with answers. She had a track record of sleeping with her bosses (Daniel, Jack) and she had been pretty sure she had learned from her mistakes. Besides, even if Mulder was _technically_ the agent in charge of their division, he had always treated her as an equal.

Partners.

She wasn’t blind, however – Fox Mulder was the most infuriating man she had ever met, the smartest, sharpest agent she had ever worked with and yes, he was cute. Very.

But no, they didn’t sleep together in 1992 or 1993

Or – when The X-Files were shut down.

 

* * *

 

Hindsight was 20/20 as the saying went, but at the time, she had been aware that she had feelings for Mulder, chosen not to label them – because they scared the hell out of her – and she was just satisfied being Mulder’s friend.

His best friend.

They didn’t kiss on the way back from Puerto Rico – or in the Watergate garage, or even after talking about the Flukeman.

Before Duane Barry kidnapped her (abducted – well, same difference, in the end, wasn’t it?) the last words she had exchanged with Mulder were – ripe with frustration and disbelief, just like when they worked together and butting heads over cases was how they rolled.

She called for him when Duane Barry took her; that much she remembers. She called for Mulder’s help – and hoped, while in that trunk that he would save her.

Later, she would discover the number it did on Mulder – and she would try and apologise, but Mulder wouldn’t hear any of that. But that came much later, much, much later.

He wasn’t there when she woke up from her coma – but she knew, _felt_ he had been there with her. She would never tell him that she saw him, in that _dream_ (she had settled on that label and she would stick to it until her dying breath), watching her with Melissa.

She told him she had the strength of his beliefs – but the truth was that she wasn’t ready to lose him, to let go.

CCTV cameras had images of them sharing a chaste kiss on New Year’s Eve in a hospital.

Well.

Well – that wasn’t their first kiss. It was their first _public_ kiss, which was a milestone in itself, but that ship had long sailed.

* * *

 

The first time they kissed – was shortly after she had come back to work after her kidnapping/abduction.

No. It wasn’t when Mulder brought her to that expedition with the giant fungus that came out from people throats and looked like it had taken a page out of an “Alien” movie.

No.

Donnie Pfaster.

May he rot in hell forever and ever, amen.

She had – felt raw, exposed, vulnerable and inadequate even before the bastard kidnapped her.

Terrified didn’t even begin to cover how she had felt while that psychopath who desecrated corpses held her in that closet, bound and gagged. Pfaster had tasted fresh blood and, apparently, couldn’t get enough, and what saved her life was that he took his sweet time deciding what to do with her – and to her.

Back then, before years on the run and courses in self-defence, she had felt powerless. She had been powerless.

She never told Mulder that she prayed that he would find her in time. But he did. He pulled one of his extraordinary lapses of deduction that would make Sherlock Holmes proud and found her. He rescued her.

He held as her as she cried.

She kissed him hours later – in a hotel room (not the ones they had booked – but a real hotel, for which she had been moved and grateful beyond words).

The thing about Fox Mulder, her best friend, her partner – was that he could have pin-up girls pinned to the wall of their office, he could have a porn collection (very vanilla, all things considered), but he was, at heart, an honourable, stand up, decent man.

She kissed him – and for a moment, just one moment, he kissed her back – and it was _everything._ It was everything she had imagined it would be and more. It was – also wrong.

Fox Mulder – broke the kiss because he was a trained psychologist and, above all, because he cared about her. He loved her.

She would have fucked the fear out of her system that night, she would have tried and exorcised Donnie Pfaster, but – it would have cost her Mulder.

“Not – not now, not like _this_.” He said.

Brave, honourable, idiot man.

She nodded – and he didn’t leave her alone that night: he slept on the other bed, not commenting on the fact that she only pretended to sleep.

They never talked about it again. Their partnership, their friendship, whatever the hell was happening between them was too important. It was the most important thing in her life. Mulder’s crusade had become her own, as well.

She was only human – and so was Mulder.

* * *

 

The second time they kissed it was in an elevator. She had thought he was dead, logic and common sense dictated that he should be dead – but he wasn’t. She had known when she had dreamed of him – she had felt, deep in her heart that he was still alive. That he would come back to her.

He had.

It was quick, passionate and left her with her heart pounding and her blood singing.

He was back – they were together, therefore they didn’t need any words – and, at the time, when they were still so young and naïve, they thought they had time – that the truth should come first.

And then Melissa was killed.

They held onto each other for hours, in that hospital room and her heart shattered, the words she wanted to say – either of love or accusation – withered in her throat and she just kept her eyes closed and heard his heart beating.

Alive.

Together.

Had they been other people, they would have talked things out between them because life could end in a heartbeat and they had giant signs above them, with arrows that pointed at each other.

She might as well have worn a t-shirt saying, “I’m Fox Mulder’s weak spot – hit me! Hurt me so you’ll break him!”

Mulder – being, well, _Mulder –_ kept his distance, wanting to protect her and she did the same. And they were both extremely good at pretending they hadn’t kissed each other, that the _thing_ between them had now a name and it was something she would die for. And so would Mulder.

 _Love_. It didn’t cover what she felt for Mulder, how he was the most important person in her life, how he was the only one she trusted, how he made her life worth living. Yes, inadequate but English still didn’t have a word for what she felt for Mulder, so she had to settle for that.  

It took Patrick Modell to remind them of that. Yes, Mulder was an idiot who jumped on running trains and flirted with Bambis and Dective Whites – but he was also the best profiler the FBI had got and almost losing him to madness (evil, he said – it was _evil_ that possessed her one-time mentor. She did _not_ care! She could not lose Mulder!) was the sort of wakeup call she needed.

Things were _complicated_ for them _._ Not so much for Patrick Modell.

Apparently, it took the creep spying on them while she dozed on Mulder’s shoulder during a stakeout to see, to know, what needed to be done.

And if she hadn’t been already in love with Mulder – if she hadn’t fallen a little more in love with him every day since she had met him, she would have fallen, hard when he didn’t shoot her.

Patrick Modell could talk men into having heart attacks, and Mulder had not hesitated while pulling the gun on himself, but he had resisted the compulsion – he had _saved_ her (protected her, loved her).

Their third kiss happened in a rental car, outside her apartment building. It was – long, lingering, and they were _that_ close to going at it in the car, but Mulder (yes, _him_. There was a recurring theme, she was aware), was the voice of reason.

Adrenaline, complicated feelings, the truth, their quest, the X-Files, Melissa, Samantha, William Mulder.

Mulder said all of those things and more – and she knew he was right because – well, he was! Things were already complicated enough, adding a relationship (she noticed, much later, that the idea of casual sex with no strings attached, had never been on the table) to the mix would only put them in danger.

Translation from Mulder-ese was: “I won’t risk losing you, Scully. I can’t-“

They sort of talked – that night, in a very roundabout way, using hypotheticals, what ifs and a lot of polysyllabic words – because they had the tendency to talk like goddamned college professors and they both loved it – to decide that yes, there was something between them, the kisses were not mistakes; but they would risk too much if it was ever discovered.

As if half the Bureau, The Syndacate, her family and the Gunmen didn’t already think they were screwing like bunnies!

Years later – both when she had to fucking _bury_ Mulder and, later, while on the run she thought that they had been two naïve, young idiots. To be frank, she thought along the same lines that night – but the thing was that Mulder wasn’t the only one who had demons to fight, he wasn’t the only one with a past – and she wouldn’t get close to hers with a ten-foot pole, at the time.

* * *

 

Karma. It was real.

And with Leonard Betts’ words still echoing in her head and _years_ of frustration she slipped – and fucked Ed Jerse. Of course, it turned out that he was a psychopath – but at the time she only saw: tall, dark, broody and not her partner and wanted to break the chains.

She was scared out of her mind. She was – terrified.

* * *

 

Cancer.

The worst thing about cancer, besides the obvious, was how it systematically stripped one of dignity. All things considered, she was lucky – she kept working, the chemo fucked with her stomach and she lost weight, but she didn’t lose hair and she didn’t lose her mind, which was what had scared her the most, at the beginning.

She was too tired and sick to care about how much Mulder tried not to cross lines and too angry because she was dying and there was _nothing_ she could do about it, to do – well, anything.

Besides: sex, chemo and metastasis? It was a bad, bad combination.

Mulder saw her naked once, during that period. She didn’t remember why – perhaps, she had forgotten to close the connecting door and he had forgotten to knock when entering her room, or maybe she had been too weak to think past: shower, teeth, pills, bed, now.

She had looked like crap, even if Mulder – years later had told her that it wasn’t true. Make up could cover a lot, but cancer wanted itself to be noticed, and bruises from IV, swollen lymph nodes were hard to miss.

She didn’t cry. She didn’t tell him to get out of her room, he didn’t move.

“My pyjamas,” She said.

She had worn them, and he had turned and hadn’t looked at her, still holding the forensic report he had taken from the table in her room.

Sex was out of the question, but he held her that night, and the night after that – and every time they conceivably could.

Mulder tried to kiss her once, during those months – and she repeated what he had told her the first time they had kissed, after Pfaster, “No, not now, not like _this_.”

She was sure she was going to die, she would not, could not do that to Mulder.

“You’re not gonna die, Scully.” He told her.

She had nodded, pretending to believe him – deciding not to use rationality and science and data, for once.

A little part of her, she thought, had thought that he had brought her back once with the strength of his beliefs – who was she to say that he couldn’t do it again?

But. But – she would not have Mulder tied to her with sex, on top of everything else. It would destroy him.

It would destroy them both before she even exhaled her last breath.

* * *

 

She kissed him – and he let her, that time in a wood, after she sang her heart out to keep him awake. They had platonically shared beds from time to time while she was sick, but when she got into his room with a tray filled with crackers, cheese and grapes Mulder had bailed.

The thing was – that in the year of the Lord 1997, they were young and couldn’t talk like functional adults, even though she had just miraculously gone into remission from an inoperable, incurable, cancer and Mulder hadn’t left her side for one moment after whatever he had done to get her a miracle.

Mulder had been afraid – incredulous that she was still alive and vulnerable, and she hadn’t cared that he had bailed, that she had to spend a night in the woods singing “Jeremiah was a Bullfrog” over and over. When she kissed him, he kissed her back and if he hadn’t been hurt things would have gone further.

They didn’t.

It had almost become a game between them at that point, they both knew something had to give eventually – but life had other plans for them.

As usual.

* * *

 

After Emily’s death she was numb for weeks. She tried not to hate God, she tried not to hate herself, not to hate Mulder – she was only partly successful. She had been assigned to The X-Files to debunk Mulder’s work, to be a spy and it was implicit that by destroying him she would have a brilliant career within the Bureau.

Fast forward six years later and Mulder’s quest had become hers as well. Mulder had lost his sister, his father – but she had almost lost her own soul. She wanted justice: for what they had done to her body, for Melissa’s death, for Emily, for Samantha, for all the women and men their government used as guinea pigs while doing pacts with aliens.

Crazy, batshit insane – but it was hard not to believe that her Government, the same one she had sworn to protect from all enemies the day she became an FBI agent, the same one her father and brother served, used them all when she had chip in her neck that could control her mind, cure her cancer and bring her to a bridge without her having any recollection of it.  

When they touched, during that period of time, after Emily’s death, before the fire in the office, there was hunger, fire, ice – they grew bolder with each other, always mindful not to cross lines that they had decided they oughtn’t to be crossed. They danced around that line, however, multiple times, always paranoid – because if _they_ (universal _they_ : from mutants to serial killers, to government agencies and traitors) found out they genuinely thought it would be the end.

Well. Perhaps, they were right, in a sense. The only time Mulder tried to kiss her while not protected by darkness a bee stung her and the next thing she knew she was in Antarctica.

* * *

 

She was jealous.

She was woman enough to admit it. She had been sort of worried for Mulder when Phoebe Greene had come back to his life (posh bitch, she hated her on sight), she had been jealous of the women Mulder connected with on the job, she had never cared about his one-night stands, even though she knew they had stopped happening after Donnie Pfaster.

Bambi, Detective White got on her nerves.

Diana Fowley scared her. She had a past with Mulder and she knew _him._ She knew Mulder’s heart because she had spent almost a decade, by that point, trying her best to protect it, to cherish it – and she knew that when the man she loved allowed someone in his heart it was for the duration.

Diana Fowley was – smart, successful, and since she had learned that coincidences seldom happened in their lives she came back right at the possible worst time and she made everything in her power to let it be known that she wanted it all back: The X-Files and Mulder.

Over. Her. Dead. Body.

 What she didn’t know at the time (another recurring theme: Mulder and her couldn’t talk for _shit_ about feelings if one of them wasn’t about to die) was that Mulder was not in love with Diana any longer; yes, he cared about her – yes, he trusted her because she had been there when he had thrown his brilliant career as a profiler away to go to the basement investigating unexplained phenomena.

Years later, while on the run (which for the first few months mostly consisted in driving around and _talk_ , like real people) he told her, plainly, as if he was talking to a five years old, that, “I was so in love with you that there wasn’t anyone else – there hasn’t been anyone else for a very long time, Scully.”

In the year of the Lord 1998, such a declaration was impossible. She wouldn’t have been ready to accept it and Mulder – he would have been ready to make it (rehearsals had been made, time and again while she was sick, after she was cured, when she wanted to leave Washington, after the idiot got himself almost drown in the Bermuda Triangle), but the guilt toward Samantha and his mother would have crushed him.

So, silence. And miscommunication, and misunderstandings and frustration because they weren’t just friends, but they were a bit less than lovers. Technically they had been lovers since they had both had orgasms in each other’s presence, but  - Diana Fowley and Jeffrey Spender and Kersh and the months in limbo (aka the bullpen) almost tore them apart.

Almost.

What they didn’t know – what Diana didn’t get into her thick skull was that they had both literally been to the End of the Earth for each other; she never stood a chance.

* * *

 

On her way back from Africa she had a lot of time to think about her past few years and her relationship with Mulder.

It was either that or going stir crazy with worry; she thought about how it had started (“Hi, I’m Dana Scully, I’ve been assigned to work with you!”), about how close they had been to just _screw_ over the imaginary line they had set in the sand for the past few months (who knew baseball could be so arousing? Also, giant mushrooms who made her worst fear come true sort of put things in perspective).

Her world, her Faith, her belief system had spun on its axis, she was so tired of denying herself the only thing she really wanted.

She wanted Mulder. For real.

First, however, she had to make sure he didn’t die.

* * *

 

“You were my constant, my touchstone!” Mulder said.

“And you are mine!” She replied.

With his apartment bugged (the Gunmen swept it twice a week, but they always knew when they were being listened to) it was the closest they could get to a proper declaration.

Not that she cared about the words. Mulder had all but drawn them in blood for all the world to see. And they had got another miracle, she wouldn’t risk wasting more time.

* * *

 

Their first public kiss – for all CCTV cameras to see happen in a hospital, right after they had fought Zombies, as one did.

The world didn’t end. There weren’t laser dots on either of them and they walked hand in hand toward the car.

She felt happy – and deliriously in love with the idiot who looked like a GQ cover man even in jeans and a t-shirt.   

* * *

 

Closure.

Mulder loved her – she knew that, apparently _everyone_ knew it, but part of him was still a thirteen years old boy who closed his eyes every night before getting into his room hoping that when he opened them his sister would be there.

They didn’t have a body to bury – they had a diary and Mulder was so raw, so _exhausted_ that she didn’t even try and poke holes in that story. He wanted closure, he wanted to believe that his sister was in a better place, that he could just look up at the sky, pick a star and he would find his sister.

Fine. Perhaps, it was another lie that would come and bit them back in the ass (it didn’t, to that one), perhaps, it was the fact that for the first time since they had met, Mulder was _free._ He had closure. He deserved closure. He deserved the world.

She could only offer him her heart, hoping that time he would accept it.

He did.

* * *

 

She screwed up.

At the time there was one thing Fox Mulder still didn’t know about her: she was _very_ good at self-sabotaging her life.

Going off with CGB Spender? That was the mothership of all screw ups.

Mulder had never resented her for Ed Jerse, even much later, (“We both had a life, we both slept with people we shouldn’t have to,”), he had teased her about Sheriff what-was-his-face, but she knew that following Spender senior could be a deal breaker.

She was stupid, reckless and years, many years later, she would found out just how high the price she paid for that mistake was.

It wasn’t like having an affair with a married man – but she felt like she had cheated on Mulder nevertheless.

She learned one thing: there was nothing Mulder wouldn’t forgive her – and she would never, ever hurt him again.

* * *

 

Things were weird for a while: they were lovers (the hell with technicalities: they had sex, she had asked him to be a donor for the IVF, they were _committed_ to each other), but still – it was new. She had crossed a divide but there was still baggage.

She couldn’t bear children, she had a chip in the back of her neck that could potentially kill her, and she had let her past fester.

Enter Karma.

Deep down, she had always known the truth: that she chose to be with Mulder every single day, that she wouldn’t change a thing, that she loved him beyond reason – but not touching her past, letting it fester had made rooms to doubts, to what ifs.

She had been good at self-sabotaging herself, and her latest stint had made her re-evaluate a lot of things, including her relationship with Daniel.

What meeting Daniel again made clear was that she had stopped running. It had happened on March 6th 1992, she had believed, genuinely believed that she had humoured Mulder by dancing for so long around invisible lines, but the truth was that she hadn’t been ready.

Mulder’s apartment, she realised, was _home._ He was everything she wanted, everything she needed.

Mulder had got closure by reading a diary and going alone in a field. She got hers on his couch, with a Navajo blanket he draped around her shoulders and with the way in which, hours later, she tiptoed in his bedroom.

They were lovers already, but she had never given herself completely to Mulder. She had held back – she had been terrified. She still was, that night, but for the first time, she felt like they could make it – they could have it all.

And for a short while they did.

* * *

 

Years – a lifetime together: they had loved each other, they were codependent, they had fought and called it quits – but in the end, she had known, felt, that they would be together again.

They weren’t young any longer, they weren’t naïve, they had lost too much, seen too much to waste time. She had had to bury Mulder, had to pick a suit and see the casket being lowered to the ground and had to live _after_ that.

She had lost children, that had never been hers, to begin with – she had been experimented on, medically raped, kidnapped, held at a gunpoint – and Fox William Mulder was still there, with her, ready to spend the rest of his life with her.

She told him.

“I’ve been telling you to pick china patterns for decades!” He said.

She threw a pillow at him and he grinned.

She should be scared, she thought, but she couldn’t be. Not that time.

It took them 25 years, hundreds, if not thousands of stolen kisses of dancing around invisible lines, of too brief happiness, of darkness and light and blood.

But they were there.

Together.

Rings and signing papers wouldn’t change anything, she was Mulder’s – he was hers, but it made them smile to think that they were finally doing it. They were living their lives, they were not afraid of the dark.

There were no invisible lines.

Not any more.

 

 

  


End file.
